Slow Burn transcript: David Duke’s rallies from his 1990 U.S. Senate race.
This article is adapted from “A Silent Army,” the fourth episode of Slow Burn’s new season.
The Blind River Bar was located in swampland in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, about 40 miles outside Baton Rouge. One morning in the summer of 1990, 300 people headed there to eat and drink and cheer on David Duke during his campaign for the United States Senate.
Duke had staged a different kind of rally in Livingston Parish in 1975. Back then, the Klan leader had burned a 40-foot cross, shouted the N-word, and threatened Black Americans with violence. “Give usliberty,” he said, “and give themdeath.”
By 1990, Duke had learned to use softer language. But the politician and his followers were still focused on the same enemy. Public radio journalist Plater Robinson asked one attendee, who identified himself as an unemployed boiler repair man, what brought him out that day. “I was a small businessman at one time. And I got run out by minorities,” he said.
The people gathered at the Blind River Bar wanted to believe in David Duke, and they were tired of the media telling them that they should know better than to vote for an ex-Klansman. As the Senate candidate barnstormed across the state, a sort of Duke-mania began to take hold among white voters in Louisiana. When Duke addressed his clamoring fans, he made it clear that this wasn’t just a campaign. It was a cause.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I look around at this country. I love this country deeply. And I believe we’re losing it,” he told them. “And I know what we once were, and I want to make us great again, ladies and gentlemen. We gotta stand up for this country!”
AdvertisementBess Carrick spent 1990 following Duke around. She was making a documentary about the politician and his movement, and after a while all the rallies she went to started to blend together.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “He would create that virulent crowd mentality. They were transfixed with what he had to say. They would do whatever he told them to do.” — Bess Carrick“They had this blond woman with a blue dress who, you know, just absolutely was like the picture-perfect Aryan superwoman. And she sang the national anthem every time I went to a Duke rally,” she remembers. “And then he’d have some rabble-rousers that would come on stage. And this one fella would wind up the audience.”
Duke’s warmup act was a former Democratic congressman named John Rarick. Rarick had represented the Baton Rouge area in the U.S. House in the 1960s and ’70s. One Black legislator called him “the leading racist in Congress.”
AdvertisementPlater Robinson recorded Rarick’s speech at the Blind River Bar. “There’s only one candidate that says he believes the whole civil rights bill should be changed to just say it’s against the law for an American to discriminate against an American,” Rarick said, to a roaring response.
“God, what a miserable son of a bitch that guy was,” Bess Carrick says, recalling Rarick’s speeches. “Everybody was very happy and they would jump in front of the camera and wave and carry on and say, you know, Put me on TV. Put me on TV.Then once Rarick got ’em all wound up, the mood in the room would just absolutely become palpably tense and bitter and horrible.”
Advertisement AdvertisementDavid Duke didn’t sound as angry as his followers were. He presented himself as a sorrowful patriot—a man who wanted to restore the United States to its former glories.
“I know why I’m here and I know why you’re here,” he told the crowd at one rally.“We know that America cannot prosper and be safe and sound for all of its citizens and offer hope for all of our young people until we have a system that rewards people who work and produce.”
AdvertisementPeople who work and produce—that was a not-so-coded reference to Duke’s white base. And then there were the people that allegedly didn’t work, and didn’t produce. Duke talked about them, too.
Advertisement“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to find a way to reduce the massive, illegitimate welfare birth rate, because I tell you people on welfare are having children faster than they can raise our taxes to pay for them all,” he said.
Before I started working on this season of Slow Burn, I wrote a book and made a podcast series about the origins of the “welfare queen” stereotype. When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1976, he told an exaggerated story about a woman named Linda Taylor—an anecdote that depicted poor Black women as a drain on society. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year,” Reagan said, inaccurately, of Taylor.
Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementDuring his 1990 Senate campaign, Duke put his own spin on the “welfare queen” myth. The story he told was cruder than Reagan’s, and even more ludicrous. But the crowd reacted just the way Duke wanted it to.
Advertisement AdvertisementThe doctor said, he said, “Representative, I’ve got a bit of information for you that you might find interesting.” He said, “Right now I have a lady in my outer office who is on welfare. She’s in her 30s, she has three teenage daughters that were all born illegitimate. And this lady is pregnant now with an illegitimate child. And all three of her daughters are now also pregnant with an illegitimate child.” And he said, “You know what else?” And I said, “I can’t imagine what else.” He said, “The woman and all three of the daughters are all pregnant—by the same man.” [Crowd: “Oooooooh.”] I tell you. That guy’s jealous over there. [Laughs.]
Aid to Families With Dependent Children—the program commonly known as “welfare”—made up just 2 percent of Louisiana’s annual budget. The state’s monthly stipend for a family of three was one of the stingiest in the country—$190.
Recently in History
- Ten Years Ago, His Book About Civilizational Collapse Got Unexpectedly Popular. He’s Back With a Little Bit of Hope.
- An Expert in Underground LSD Packaging Shows Off One of His Favorites
- Why the World of Typewriter Collectors Splits Down the Middle When These Machines Come Up for Sale
- Why Americans Love the Chicago Rat Hole
But for David Duke, the reality of welfare wasn’t important. What mattered was the message he sent by demonizing it.
The people at Duke’s rallies were primed to receive that message. At one campaign event, a woman screamed out: “We’re tired of those lazy bastards collecting checks.”
“I’ve been around, you know, racists and whack jobs,” Bess Carrick says. “But the problem with David Duke’s rallies was that he would create that virulent crowd mentality. And he had a real cultlike following. And they were transfixed with what he had to say. They would do whatever he told them to do.”
AdvertisementOne time, at a Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost in New Orleans, Carrick’s cameraman started shooting B-roll of the crowd. She followed him down the center aisle.
And we see the faces of the Duke supporters. And I looked in their eyes. … It felt like they had been broken a long time ago.
And it hit me like a wave. And I felt extremely nauseous and sad at the same time.That broken people do search for these leaders that imbue them with a sense of rage and power that’s all a complete illusion.Like, if we did not have our own barriers up and our own awareness, we could feel the fishhooks of his propaganda, like hooking into part of our brains and just reeling us off to the side.
He is just very convincing, and everything he says, if you don’t examine it carefully, if you just eat it, eat it, eat it in. Swallow it. You’re going to buy it.
Listen to this full episode of Slow Burn below, or subscribe to Slow Burn on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.Join Slate Plus for your ad-free feed and bonus episodes, including this week’s: Topher Grace talks about what it was like to play David Duke in BlackKklansman.
View TranscriptGet More Slow Burn
Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcasts—and much more. Sign up today.
Join Slate PlusSubscribe to Slow Burn
Copy this link and add it in your podcast app.
copied!For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page.
Tweet Share Share Comment-
Echo Dot (5th gen) deal — get it for $29.99 at Amazon爆汁甘甜,来一颗北纬21°界炮圣女果!践行“光盘行动”传播文明就餐理念外出经商不忘家乡 出资举办文体活动How much for Oasis tickets? Fans joke about splurging on reunion shows早春茶采摘时间提前 鲜叶价格大幅上涨接到命令立即抢险 争取最短时间恢复通行能力市市场监管局开展专项检查加强钢铁行业监管Scientists detect water sloshing on Mars. There could be a lot.市公安局交警支队:多措施筑牢预防道路交通事故安全屏障
下一篇:Tesla issues recall for 9,100 Model X cars
- ·13 Astronomical Clocks Connecting Time And Space
- ·市区雅州大道部分休闲座椅脏乱 市民入座难
- ·召开党风廉政建设警示教育专题会
- ·时代先锋 创业楷模
- ·Unionized hospital workers pull out from strike
- ·科普链接:动植物基因库之冠鱼狗
- ·广州零工市场调查:用工量少了,工价降了
- ·广东一村出台红娘激励办法,促成一对奖励600元!
- ·Against All Odds: How Netflix Made It
- ·重拳打击禁渔期非法捕捞 有效保护渔业资源及其水域生态环境
- ·展现女性魅力 彰显巾帼风采
- ·连平花生:百岁的“红胖子”,农民的“金豆子”
- ·LG Display starts production of advanced OLED displays for gaming
- ·2019年“法考”31日开考
- ·市区雅州大道部分休闲座椅脏乱 市民入座难
- ·天全县多功乡:党建引领探索致富新途径